The $95 bedroom makeover!

TAKING trash and turning it into furniture or art is Candice Addicoat’s specialty, and she believes it’s possible to do a complete makeover of a room with as little as $95.

BEFORE: The Oaks Estate bedroom before Candice Addicoat got to work.

In fact, Candice, 45, of Griffith, recently just transformed a whole room for about $10 but had access to furniture from St Vincent de Paul, which organised the project, and The Green Shed, which is where Candice runs cost-effective design workshops titled “RePsyched”.

The project saw her transform a ’70s Oaks Estate flat, which she says was in a really bad condition, into a Tuscan villa-inspired space.

And now it’s finished, Candice is using the timeliness of National Recycling Week, which runs from November 12 to 18, to launch a series of free demonstrations teaching people how to take recyclables and turn them into home items or art.

“They’ll be about making simple and affordable things with recycling and they’ll be accessible to anyone,” she says.

Candice is using the Oaks Estate project as an example of how simple some of the items are to create or how easy it is to turn them into “junk funk” (as she likes to say) because she’s taking junk and turning it into something funky and “on trend”.

“Anyone can make any of these artworks because they’re really simple,” she says.

“I’ve had people tell me they don’t have a creative bone in their body and I can guarantee I can prove them wrong.”

Candice will also be putting the workshops on her website so people can access them from home.

“One of my core values is giving people the skills to live well in their spaces regardless of what income they have and if they have next to no income,” she says.

“I find solutions in things people have thrown away and there’s very few new materials I’d use because I’m always trying to use what’s freely available.

“I even stop when I see things on the side of the road because I can see the potential in them.

“Even if we put stuff in the recycling bin, it’s costing a lot of money.

“I want people to use this stuff before it gets to the tip or a waste management centre.”

Taking the bedroom at Oaks Estate as an example, Candice gave “CityNews” a break-down of just how affordable it can be to “funkify” the furniture and decor in a room, saying it cost her about $10.

The desk cost her about 50 cents and the bed and bedhead cost about $5 (without the bedding). The bed is made up of used shipping pallets (easily available to take from the side of the road), the legs are made from wood scraps, the screws are recycled, the paint was a teaspoon of paint and a couple of tablespoons of lacquer, and the stencil, used to decorate the bed head, was about seven cents.

“Shipping pallets are good for your budget and good for the environment,” Candice says.

“They’re a pretty big environmental problem because they’re made from brand new wood and then used, dumped, and then more are made without reusing the old ones. And a lot will go to landfill.”

As for the artworks in the room, Candice says she used a lot of free cardboard, broken necklaces and old magazines to make things such as the collage-like artwork consisting of multiple “tiles”, which cost about 10 cents each to make.

Another artwork is made out of rocks Candice found outside and an old frame she found in her home – the paint was about $1.

The room also features “junk funk” items such as a unique bowl (30 cents), which is made from “ugly” plastic bowls that don’t get sold at The Green Shed and damaged children’s books.

And although Candice had help from Vinnies and The Green Shed, she says it’d cost someone about $95 to do.

“As a designer I try and look at what’s currently on trend in the design world and try to produce it in a way that anyone can do it,” she says.

“I try to make things really simple so in workshops people can have a result in 90 minutes.”

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During National Recycling Week Candice will be holding demonstrations at The Green Shed, Mitchell, 10am-2pm, Monday to Friday and 10am-4pm, Saturday to Sunday. More information at repsyched.com.au

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